Month: November 2024

Chemists have developed a novel way to capture and convert carbon dioxide into methane, suggesting that future gas emissions could be converted into an alternative fuel using electricity from renewable sources. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that accounts for a large part of Earth’s warming climate, and is produced by power plants, factories…

Experts convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified five elements of a brain-based condition that has emerged as a leading cause of vision impairment starting in childhood in the United States and other industrialized nations. Known as cerebral (or cortical) visual impairment (CVI), some estimates suggest that at least 3% of primary…

New cathode materials are being developed to further increase the capacity of lithium batteries. Multilayer lithium-rich transition metal oxides (LRTMOs) offer particularly high energy density. However, their capacity decreases with each charging cycle due to structural and chemical changes. Using X-ray methods at BESSY II, teams from several Chinese research institutions have now investigated these…

As whooping cough cases rise in the U.S., a new nasal vaccine developed by Tulane University may hold the key to reducing the spread of the highly contagious respiratory disease. Current pertussis vaccines are widely used and effective at preventing whooping cough, caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacteria. However, the vaccines fail to clear bacteria…

New research has found that a flavanol-rich cocoa drink can protect the body’s vasculature against stress even after eating high-fat food. Food choices made during periods of stress can influence the effect of stress on cardiovascular health. For example, recent research from the University of Birmingham found that high-fat foods can negatively affect vascular function…

In the United States and globally, alcohol consumption is a major cause of preventable death and disability and increases liver disease, mental health disorders and accidents. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine explored U.S. trends in alcohol-related deaths from 1999 to 2020 overall as well as by age, gender, race and region,…

Clinical visits by patients suffering ocular surface eye conditions more than doubled during times when ambient particulate matter from air pollution was in the atmosphere, signaling a possible association between climate change and ocular health, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The study, published Wednesday in the journal…

Fish stocks along the West African coast have declined significantly over the past five decades, threatening food security and the livelihoods of the fishing communities that depend on them, according to a study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) in collaboration with Fundação Maio Biodiversidade (FMB)….

AI-based technologies are rapidly learning to see, converse, calculate and create. One thing they still don’t do well, however, is measure or “feel” surfaces — a purely mechanical function. “AI has more or less acquired the sense of sight, through advances in computer vision and object recognition,” says Stevens physics professor Yong Meng Sua. “It…

The idea of maturing oocytes in the ovary to produce offspring has been implemented in various ways. One such method, ovarian transplantation, is a relatively simple procedure for obtaining eggs, compared to in vitro culture of ovaries and follicles. However, it is still difficult to transplant ovaries into cellular immunodeficient mice and produce offspring from…

A new UC Davis Health study has uncovered how Salmonella bacteria, a major cause of food poisoning, can invade the gut even when protective bacteria are present. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how the pathogen tricks the gut environment to escape the body’s natural defenses. The digestive…

A novel test developed by Duke-NUS researchers enables real-time monitoring of T cells that have been engineered to fight cancer, after re-introduction into the body of a cancer patient. This simple and innovative test provides clinicians with the ability to track the function of these cancer-fighting cells over the course of the treatment. T cells…

Adults exhibit a general tendency to make better decisions than adolescents, and this improvement drives an increase in specific and more sophisticated choice behaviors, according to a study published November 14 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Vanessa Scholz and Lorenz Deserno from the University of Würzburg, Germany, and colleagues. Learning and decision-making change…

Can light itself cast a shadow? It may sound like a philosophical riddle, but researchers have found that under certain conditions, a laser beam can act like an opaque object and cast a shadow. The discovery challenges the traditional understanding of shadows and opens new possibilities for technologies that could use a laser beam to…

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth somewhere near Purdue and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite was rediscovered in a drawer at Purdue…

A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, in collaboration with the MSB Medical School Berlin and the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, shows that switching to an opt-out organ donation policy, where all adults are presumed organ donors unless they explicitly opt out, does not increase…

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have reached a record high in 2024, according to new research by the Global Carbon Project science team. The 2024 Global Carbon Budget projects fossil carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions of 37.4 billion tonnes, up 0.8% from 2023. Despite the urgent need to cut emissions to slow climate change,…

In the race to develop robust perception systems for robots, one persistent challenge has been operating in bad weather and harsh conditions. For example, traditional, light-based vision sensors such as cameras or LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) fail in heavy smoke and fog. However, nature has shown that vision doesn’t have to be constrained by…